UPDATE: [American] Female Academic Superstardom (2008 M/MLA)

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We have extended our deadline to April 30th, 2008!

The Women's Caucus for the Midwest Modern Languages Association isinviting 250-word abstracts for a panel entitled "Female AcademicSuperstardom." The 50th Annual Convention of the Midwest Modern LanguageAssociation will take place on November 13-16, 2008 in Minneapolis,Minnesota.

This panel will explore female academic superstardom from a variety ofperspectives. Successful abstracts might address one or more of thefollowing questions:

How does a critic or theorist become an "academostar," a term used todescribe a high-profile academic in a 2001 special issue of The MinnesotaReview devoted to academic superstardom?

Is there room on the runway for female "academostars"?

What effects have students, teachers, departments, and/or the academyexperienced as a result of academic superstar culture currently prevalentin academia?

What trends have occurred in academic superstardom in the past severaldecades, and what do they mean for academic women, female students,and/or for the field?

How does the fame of a female academic, like Judith Butler or ElaineShowalter, perhaps, affect the field differently than the fame of a maleacademic like Henry Louis Gates, Jr. or Stanley Fish, for instance?

How do race and/or sexual orientation affect academic superstardom?

How do academic memoirs, such as Jane Tompkins's A Life in School, affectthe field, both in terms of public perception and actual teachingpractices?

How does it affect academics and/or academia that the mention of acurrently "hot" academic superstar, especially one perceived as importantpolitically or especially "difficult," such as Eve Sedgwick or HortenseSpillers, seems an essential component for current academic research?

Please send abstracts to to Andrea Powell atampowell_at_bsu.edu.

If your abstract is accepted for inclusion on the panel, you will beexpected to register for the conference and to become a member of M/MLA.